escalation?

I just got home a little while ago from a local parlor meeting in which Moshe Feiglin, head of Manhigut Yehudit, (who by the way confirmed for me that he is friends with Jameel, though David Shirel had no idea who "Jameel" is and had never heard of him), explained his views and ideas. Maybe I will blog about that tomorrow, as it is late right now and I need to go to sleep.

I got home to see that Haifa was hit with Katyusha rockets this evening. The powers to be have declared that this is a major escalation, and basically that now we will show them. I also recall reading earlier in the day, in response to threats made by Hizb'allah to hit Haifa with rockets, that we have threatened that if they do so we would turn the Lebanese clock back by 20 years, and they should know we have many more rockets than them, and that we would pave over Beirut, and we would bomb not just runways but also cities and neighborhoods, etc..

This whole concept strikes me as being wrong and misplaced.

Why is attacking Haifa an escalation? Is attacking the border not enough? Is raining Katyushas on the whole northern Israel not enough of a reason to "pave over Beirut"? Is shooting Katyushas on Kiryat Shmona, Nahariya and Safed (among other places) not enough? Why is Haifa a major escalation? And now that they hit Haifa will we declare the next farthest hit another escalation that deserves a harsher response?

It is all the same. They attacked our country. We finally decided to respond. Now they are shooting rockets at various cities. Every city is the same. The civilians living in Nahariya are no less important then the citizens living in Haifa nor less than those living in Natanya (which Hizb'Allah has also threatened to hit with rockets). It is not an escalation and the reaction should be harsher to stop the rockets, but not because Hizb'Allah has escalated the conflict, but because that is the appropriate reaction to when your country has been attacked by a foreign government.